Real Change’s Tim Harris Appears In Video Endorsement of Mike McGinn

To those who have followed Seattle Mike McGinn’s highly touted City Center Initiative, it likely comes as no surprise that Real Change Founding Director and social justice advocate Tim Harris is a fan of the mayor’s work.

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Today Harris repeated his support for McGinn - in video form. In a YouTube clip uploaded about an hour ago, Harris provides three reasons why he’s voting for McGinn. Not surprisingly, all of them focus on the issues close to Harris’ heart - social justice and sticking up for Seattle’s less fortunate.

Leading the way, Harris says McGinn has “political courage,” citing the mayor’s veto of the controversial aggressive panhandling bill early in his term.

“The first thing the mayor did when he came into office was to veto the aggressive panhandling legislation, even when he knew that wasn’t going to win him any friends with the downtown folks,” Harris tells the camera. “He did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do.”

Harris goes on to applaud McGinn’s values, saying he’s consistently “made budget choices that are about bringing the outsiders in … and evening the playing field.”

Finally, challenging a common theme of Ed Murray’s campaign against him, Harris says McGinn unites people. It’s here that the Real Change Founding Director - without mentioning the effort by name - obviously speaks directly to McGinn’s Center City Initiative.

“He brings people together. We could have gotten into a big ugly shouting match over downtown civility disorder over this last year. Instead, he brought together people from downtown and the human services community to talk about how we can all work together to create the downtown we need,” offers Harris. “That’s revolutionary, and new, and creative, and is the kind of thing that we need from a mayor.”

“Vote your values,” Harris concludes. “Don’t vote for the guy you think is going to win the horse race, vote for the guy that we need.”